William

The enzymes in food, meat for instance, are just the enzymes involved in the cellular biochemistry of the animal the meat comes from. These enzymes cannot digest the meat. Nothing to do with digestive enzymes. Absolutely nothing. Just pseudoscientific babble of people who don't know what an enzyme is.

Hm. This has the smell of truth.

It looks like I can discard Howell's enzyme theory, and, in accordance with the engineering principle K.I.S.S., use the Hippocratic approach.

Thanks to alphagruis for writing this so well that I can get a grip on it.

William, i think you gave us all the impression that you were saying that pemmican is just as good as raw meat and fat.

I also dont see how pemmican works out to be less expensive than raw? I mean you still have to buy the meat and fat, where I would just eat it, you're processing it into a different form for some reason.

Now if you dont have access to anything except mabye a fire... like.. how did the indians boil down their tallow? Drying meat is easy you just hang it up in strips and leave it (i find its best after drying for like 3-4 weeks). I will be needing to make pemmican for the winters but i am not going to have access to pots and pans or anything that you cant find in the middle of the woods so how do i go about doing the fat part?

There is no one that I know of that is doing well on a pemmican-only diet over the long term, especially if the pemmican is composed of just meat and fat. Throughout history there have been many people and groups that have used pemmican as the majority of their diet for several months at a time, but none that I know of that don't add, or revert to fresh foods when available. I also have had extensive communications with about a dozen people from various forums that thought pemmican would be the Holy Grail, but most developed problems as the months progressed when it was the only food eaten. The ones that had the most success were the ones that added between 5% and 10% by weight of dried berries (strawberries, blueberries, cranberries, etc) to their mix.

Yes, I know about Delfuego, and in my past communications with him he seems to have been far more concerned with maintaining the image he has created on ZIOH than being fully forthcoming about what he is actually doing. Even on the ZIOH forum he's been asked repeatedly for specifics, but provides little in the way of detailed information. Long ago I gave up trusting the self proclaimed gurus without verification.

People are free to argue over whether pemmican is a true paleo food or not. I have no axe to grind either way. I've found pemmican useful as a supplement to my normal diet, especially when traveling and as an emergency food. This seems to be in line with how it has been used throughout history. I've seen no evidence that pemmican has ever been used by the North American Natives that invented it, as the only food eaten.

Lex

Here is Delfuego's answer :

"We really do eat an all pemmican diet. My wife was able to retrieve her life with this amazing food. At first I was just along for the ride fully planning on returning to a more normal zc diet after pemmican (hopefully) helped her. I was amazed at how pemmican altered my life as well and have readily stayed with it all these years!

Lex points out that I haven't been forthcoming in giving specific details (about our diet I presume). On the contrary I have posted repeatedly What it is we eat and how it's prepared. I have answered every single pm, e-mail and phone call with courtesy, patience and full divergence as to how we live and what we eat.

For those who haven't been following this thread we eat your basic traditional pemmican made in with lean bison or beef dried at 100-115 degrees. We use rendered lamb, beef or bison fat at a ratio of 3 or 4 parts suet to 1 part soft fat. We render the fat at 250 degrees for a day. We experimented with a more raw version last year that, in my view, was unsuccessful. This is also fully chronicled in the pemmican thread. The only new addition to our pemmican making came this last December when I built several of Lex's light boxes. (Love, love, love these things!!)

We were zc for 5 years before going all pemmican. This may or may not explain why we are able to do this while others cannot. I don't know. I've had three people tell me that they've had success acclimating to an all pemmican diet by tempering. They added small amounts of other foods here and there to slow the bodies healing. One person used white chocolate, another used rib -eye steaks and another used small amounts of fruit juice.

I'm open to trying to fully understand how pemmican works and how it doesn't work. I'm not especially open to having my integrity questioned however!"

William

William, i think you gave us all the impression that you were saying that pemmican is just as good as raw meat and fat.

Certainly not intended, and I tried to make it clear that I eat pemmican because I can not get the right grass-finished fat meat. Fact is, I have no basis for comparison and neither has anyone else here. What I have tried to convey is that pemmican does no harm. This has been proven by countless thousands.

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I also dont see how pemmican works out to be less expensive than raw? I mean you still have to buy the meat and fat, where I would just eat it, you're processing it into a different form for some reason.

$2.75/lb. grassfed muscle sections, 50¢/lb. unclean back fat. Eggs ~$4/dozen - I eat only the expensive ones with deep yellow yolks, and chuck the whites.I could never eat enough yucky fat with raw meat, so pemmican is it. No choice.

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Now if you dont have access to anything except mabye a fire... like.. how did the indians boil down their tallow? Drying meat is easy you just hang it up in strips and leave it (i find its best after drying for like 3-4 weeks). I will be needing to make pemmican for the winters but i am not going to have access to pots and pans or anything that you cant find in the middle of the woods so how do i go about doing the fat part?

The story is the people would dig a hole, line it with a skin, drop hot rocks in it to boil water or render fat.In the movie "The Snow Walker" (you've gotta see this! Some real Inuit lore, probably closest that anyone has ever seen to paleo tricks)(and at least one big fat lie that I spotted) an Inuk rendered caribou fat in a crude metal pot made out of the crashed aircraft and very carefully poured off the top liquid. Note that the first thing the natives acquired from europeans was pots. I bet because it's a lot easier than the hole-in-the-ground thing.

And how could you make coffee without a pot? Everybody who lives in the bush drinks coffee, so what do you offer the guest? The guest-rite is super important.No matter how isolated and remote, someone always shows up. Eventually.

What I have tried to convey is that pemmican does no harm. This has been proven by countless thousands.

This is the one part of your statement that I disagree with. I think it is correct to say that there is evidence that no harm is done in the short term for people eating only pemmican. I think Delfuego is the only "documented" person that has done pemmican only for a somewhat lengthy time (even 5 years isn't long term). If you had other sources we'd all like to hear about it. Like Lex said, pemmican was always used as a substitute and never as an indefinite food source.

Saying that there is no evidence of harm done by pemmican is incomplete and in my opinion needs a further statement clarifying over what time period we have observed people eating stricly pemmican. Again, Lex has noted that many people have indeed had poor results long term. Perhaps, we can get more information from him.

Since you asked re papers, here's some stuff below your other comment.Denying the value of enzymes in raw foods re digestion is just wholly wrong. I can name 2 enzyme supplements derived from enzymes in raw foods, bromelain (from pineapples) and papain(from papayas) which older people commonly use to help digest foods when their own digestive enzymes are too low to do the job. I don't think you can seriously claim that these do not work. Besides, there's Dr Howell's research who provided various papers on the subject of enzymes in raw foods.

Here's an article, with bibilography of multiple studies which you can click on at the bottom:-

As bromelain (papain) does not digest pineapples (papayas) for obvious reasons.

These plants are not so stupid to produce enzymes capable to digest their own fruits or tissues. Similarly animals are not so stupid to produce enzymes that digest their own tissues, organs, muscles etc.

Yet there are obviously people who are so stupid to believe such non-sense. Breathtaking and so amusing.

Once more Tyler which enzymes are there is the raw meat and fat we are talking of and that would help digest them ? Name them please.

Please do it

There are of course none. Absolutely none.

Again if there were any, meat would actually just digest by itself when left on butcher's shelf or in fridge within a few hours

Howard is certainly right about the remarkable fact he observed that raw food is far easier to digest than cooked food. But his interpretation is wrong. This has actually very little to do with raw food enzyme inactivation by heat. This "explanation" doesn't become true just because it has spread in alternative medicine circles.... It has essentially to do with the absence of heat generated damage and toxins. Damaged proteins for instance by racemization or glycation are much harder to digest than intact proteins because of the fairly high stereospecificity of our own digestive enzymes The key (enzyme) no longer fits well into the damaged lock (heated protein)

Your link supposed to provide support to the naive enzyme babble is also irrelevant. I didn't ask for a link advertising enzymes supplements for sale....

I just asked for the reference (journal,year, authors, page etc) of a scientific paper in peer reviewed journals supporting your claim that enzymes in a given raw food are capable to digest that same food.

Once more Tyler which enzymes are there is the raw meat and fat we are talking of and that would help digest them ? Name them please.

Please do it

There are of course none. Absolutely none.

Again if there were any, meat would actually just digest by itself when left on butcher's shelf or in fridge within a few hours

im definitely not an expert, but i did just take a biology class at university and i do know that all cells have enzymes. once the cell dies, the enzymes in the lysosomes start to 'digest' the cell so that the cell's molecules can be used by other cells (not necessarily from the same organism). so, just off the top of my head, there are many proteases and lipases that unravel proteins and fats. that's exactly why meat ages, just not within a 'few hours'. enzyme reactions occur on different time scales according to its environment (temp, acidity, etc) so the molecular break down that usually occurs rapidly inside a living body takes much longer when dead and cold. maybe im missing something...

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alphagruis

im definitely not an expert, but i did just take a biology class at university and i do know that all cells have enzymes. once the cell dies, the enzymes in the lysosomes start to 'digest' the cell so that the cell's molecules can be used by other cells (not necessarily from the same organism). so, just off the top of my head, there are many proteases and lipases that unravel proteins and fats. that's exactly why meat ages, just not within a 'few hours'. enzyme reactions occur on different time scales according to its environment (temp, acidity, etc) so the molecular break down that usually occurs rapidly inside a living body takes much longer when dead and cold. maybe im missing something...

The enzymes present in cells at death are those involved in the cell's normal biochemistry. No new ones are synthesized after death. Many enzymes are involved in specific pathways such as those that produce energy or synthetise important cell components (anabolism). Others are indeed related to catabolism and recycling of cell components. There are for instance proteases that recycle specific proteins but in the very tiny quantities required to maintain normal cell structure and that cannot be seriously compared with those of digestive enzymes during the digestive process.

I agree that these proteases still hydrolyse some protein after death and contribute a little bit to "age" the meat but this is a very limited process that stops anyway after a while because there is no more active transport of protons through lysosome membrane to maintain the appropriate pH that allows these enzymes to be active. Protein and other biomolecule transport stops too and so the "recycling factory" eventually blocks. Because the needed energy is no longer produced by the cell. Aging of meat is a complex process that certainly includes also many non enzymatic chemical reactions and is largely the effect of active bacteria and fungi with their own enzymes. It is probably not well understood.

However what is clear is that meat left a few hours at room temperature or even body temperature has by no means been "digested" to any similar degree and by far as the same meat a few hours after ingestion and digestion by our own enzyme production in digestive tract. The effect of intrinsic meat enzymes such as lysosome proteases must therefore be quite negligible in digestion. Not to mention the fact that the meat enzymes tend to be denaturated in stomacal acid environment as all other proteins to permits action of digestive enzymes.

Well maybe I'm missing something too but I can't see any serious role of natural enzymes in a raw food during digestion of that same food. If anything helps in digestion of raw meat it has perhaps more to do with the effect of bacteria and fungi that predigest the food.

.......Lex points out that I haven't been forthcoming in giving specific details (about our diet I presume). On the contrary I have posted repeatedly What it is we eat and how it's prepared. I have answered every single pm, e-mail and phone call with courtesy, patience and full divergence as to how we live and what we eat.

For those who haven't been following this thread we eat your basic traditional pemmican made in with lean bison or beef dried at 100-115 degrees. We use rendered lamb, beef or bison fat at a ratio of 3 or 4 parts suet to 1 part soft fat. We render the fat at 250 degrees for a day. We experimented with a more raw version last year that, in my view, was unsuccessful. …….

I must plead guilty to not staying current on the ZIOH Pemmican thread. It may be true that Delfuego has provided more detailed information in recent months, I can’t say. I can say that while I was active on the thread, little of the above information was disclosed and I was disappointed in the level of information offered, however, this is only my opinion. Also, please note that I made no suggestion whatever that anything Delfuego said was incorrect, only that I felt detail was lacking. Each of us is free to follow up and make our own decisions on the matter.

My point in making the statement in the first place was to suggest that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on one person’s claims – the Bear’s, Delfuego’s, or mine. Each of us has our bias and/or agenda. It is important that we insist on more than one source to validate a premise, and try to uncover the potential bias of each source if we wish to create a true picture – this applies to peer reviewed research as well. To that end I do my best to acknowledge and clearly state my own biases, (at least the ones I’m aware of), as well as my thought processes, so that people can best decide how much weight to give my opinions. As anyone who has followed my postings on this forum knows, I’ve been shown to be wrong on a number of occasions. I accept it as part of the learning process.

Saying that there is no evidence of harm done by pemmican is incomplete and in my opinion needs a further statement clarifying over what time period we have observed people eating strictly pemmican. Again, Lex has noted that many people have indeed had poor results long term. Perhaps, we can get more information from him.

Yes, several people that have tried a pemmican-only diet have reported long term problems, especially pemmican made only with muscle meat and fat. I certainly wouldn’t say that pemmican is “harmful”, only that pemmican made with just muscle meat and fat might be nutritionally incomplete. Just because something doesn’t satisfy ALL nutritional needs doesn’t mean it is harmful. If this were the case, then water would have to be declared harmful as would every other individual food.

I eat pemmican and find it a remarkable food. However, I don’t use pemmican as my only food. It is my opinion that raw fresh meats, (including a small amount of a wide variety of organ meats), are preferable when available.

Lex

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William

Yes, several people that have tried a pemmican-only diet have reported long term problems, especially pemmican made only with muscle meat and fat. Just because something doesn’t satisfy ALL nutritional needs doesn’t mean it is harmful. If this were the case, then water would have to be declared harmful as would every other individual food.

I, and others, have had problems with raw fresh ground beef. I think that this might be idiosyncratic, but if one were to use the reasoning (?) of the anti-pemmican complainers, then it logically follows that raw fresh ground beef must be harmful. It's not paleo either.

Well maybe I'm missing something too but I can't see any serious role of natural enzymes in a raw food during digestion of that same food. If anything helps in digestion of raw meat it has perhaps more to do with the effect of bacteria and fungi that predigest the food.

i suspect this is the case too. the bacteria has to be doing something if the food's enzymes are not. i mean it's quite obvious that raw foods are easier to digest than cooked and there's gotta be some logical reasoning. perhaps the bacterial enzymes are the key, not the enzymes in meat. i dont know though, this is all just kind of a pointless conversation though. we already know raw is better, who cares how or why. i feel good eating raw so im gonna keep it up

I, and others, have had problems with raw fresh ground beef. I think that this might be idiosyncratic, but if one were to use the reasoning (?) of the anti-pemmican complainers, then it logically follows that raw fresh ground beef must be harmful. It's not paleo either.

Suit yourself. I report. You decide.

Lex

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alphagruis

i suspect this is the case too. the bacteria has to be doing something if the food's enzymes are not. i mean it's quite obvious that raw foods are easier to digest than cooked and there's gotta be some logical reasoning. perhaps the bacterial enzymes are the key, not the enzymes in meat. i dont know though, this is all just kind of a pointless conversation though. we already know raw is better, who cares how or why. i feel good eating raw so im gonna keep it up

I agree. Raw meat is by far much easier to digest and much better food than cooked meat. This is just a fact and I hope nobody believed that I do advocate eating cooked meat.

I eat everything plain raw, of course.

Yet I think it is of great interest to understand why and how. My present view is that:

1/ digestion is basically much easier raw than cooked because our digestive enzymes are designed by evolution to be most active on raw meat i.e. intact proteins or biomolecules. As I said in a previous post this must have to do with their stereospecificity i.e. their spatial structure that does not fit well the heat damaged proteins which results in strong reduction in enzyme activity and consequently the rate of hydrolysis and thus digestion.This is a priori by far the main reason. Predigestion by bacteria and fungi is probably an other reason but it can't be the main reason since fresh meat just after kill is as far as I know and have experienced basically as easily digested than aged meat.

2/ natural enzymes present in meat play only a negligible role in its digestion in spite of what is believed by many rawfoodists and Howell's theories . This is not to dismiss Edward Howell's entire work. I agree with his most interesting and revolutionary finding that raw food is much easier to digest than cooked. But I think its explanation of this fact in terms of intrinsic food enzymes is wrong. By Howell's time molecular biology was not yet invented nor were really known the biochemical reaction mechanisms and such things as stereospecificity involved in the real cause sketched in 1/

3/ raw food is far better because eating cooked food with its various heat generated toxins progressively poisens our organism in general and as a consequence eventually impairs our digestive enzyme production in particular.

I see, so you very , very grudgingly admit that enzymes in raw plant foods can help digestion. Well, it's a start, I suppose.

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These plants are not so stupid to produce enzymes capable to digest their own fruits or tissues. Similarly animals are not so stupid to produce enzymes that digest their own tissues, organs, muscles etc.

You're missing the point. Dr Howell and others were purely suggesting that the work of enzymes occurs after ingestion. There are plenty of substances/catalysts that only act when exposed to specific conditions. In the case of a plant, it would not be beneficial for a plant for its fruit to digest itself while on the stalk, but it would be beneficial for the plant if the fruit digested itself while in the gut of some animal.

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Again if there were any, meat would actually just digest by itself when left on butcher's shelf or in fridge within a few hours

That's not what Howell and co were suggesting. They were stating that the enzymes in raw foods start working after ingestion into the body. And besides, not even Howell or others contend that enzymes in raw foods are a major component of digestion only a minor one with issues only appearing in the long-term if enzyme-deficient foods are constantly ingested.

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It has essentially to do with the absence of heat generated damage and toxins. Damaged proteins for instance by racemization or glycation are much harder to digest than intact proteins because of the fairly high stereospecificity of our own digestive enzymes The key (enzyme) no longer fits well into the damaged lock (heated protein)

Well that at least is slightly better than previous claims re pemmican.

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I just asked for the reference (journal,year, authors, page etc) of a scientific paper in peer reviewed journals supporting your claim that enzymes in a given raw food are capable to digest that same food.

I provided you at the bottom of that article with a bibilography of numerous scientific papers showing the benefit of enzymes in raw foods re digestion. You conveniently chose to ignore it.

Here are some mentions of enzymes in raw meats, helping to predigest the meat:-

"According to the Food Enzyme Concept, “There is a mechanism operating in all creaturespermitting food enzymes to digest a particular fraction of the food in which they arecontained.” For example, raw meat contains an enzyme known as cathepsin, which iswidely distributed in muscles and organs. After the death of an animal, their tissuesbecome acidic and this promotes catheptic activity. This enzyme, therefore, promotesautolysis and aids in pre-digestion by animals that consume this raw flesh."

The clincher, in my view, that really debunks the notion that enzymes in raw foods are wholly unessential is the fact that the rich enzyme-content of human mothers' milk, is specifically designed to make sure the infant almost perfectly digests the milk, to an extent far greater than with other kinds of raw food:-

"For example, human milk has a good amount oflipase which assists the baby in digesting the high fat content of milk, which it certainlyneeds. Bovine milk also contains scores of enzymes (35+ different known enzymes),most of which are destroyed by pasteurization, that are health promoting." taken from:-

What I am more concerned about is the fact that the vast majority of RVAFers report that "high-meat" is so much, much easier to digest than standard fresh raw meats. Now, of course, one can equivocate and state that bacteria in the high-meat is the sole reason for such easier digestion, but it is just as possible that enzymes in the aged raw meat and enzymes produced by bacteria within the high meat are responsible for that, too. *At any rate, the only way to verify all this would be to remove all enzymes from raw foods without harming them via heat, and then doing a decades-long study with such foods to see if the enzyme-producing glands suffered as a result by comparison to rawists eating enzyme-rich raw foods. An unlikely scenario.

« Last Edit: January 14, 2010, 10:16:11 pm by TylerDurden »

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"What is the point of growing up If you can't be childish sometimes..." - Tom Baker as Dr Who.

I, and others, have had problems with raw fresh ground beef. I think that this might be idiosyncratic, but if one were to use the reasoning (?) of the anti-pemmican complainers, then it logically follows that raw fresh ground beef must be harmful. It's not paleo either.

The trouble is that the majority of RVAFers actually find pemmican and other heated foods to be rather harmful and less digestible than raw foods. There are always going to be unusual outliers in any example, given people's various former health-problems, and there are bound to be exceptions to the rule. For example, I get negligible effect from eating many cooked plant foods, and could in theory claim that they were OK as a result, but, because the majority of RVAFers don't do well on them, naturally, I can't realistically make such a claim.

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"What is the point of growing up If you can't be childish sometimes..." - Tom Baker as Dr Who.

There's a lie, and is hypocritical since you certainly don't follow a raw diet given your mentions of pemmican and don't appear to be following a palaeo diet either given your past mentions of consuming grainfed meats.

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"What is the point of growing up If you can't be childish sometimes..." - Tom Baker as Dr Who.

I tried the whole vitamin c-megadosing thing during my supplement-phase pre-rawpalaeo. It was a total waste of time and just led to frequent urination, at best. Aajonus has mentioned how people get a 24-hour-lasting effect from processed supplements, which he claims boost one's adrenaline so that one temporarily feels good, but that, in the long-term your health just drains away. I also experienced this temporary effect, but I think it had more to do with the placebo-effect than any adrenaline-boost as such. Unfortunately, the effect was always temporary and I realised after years of such supplementation that I was actually worse off, healthwise thanbefore that phase, despite taking dozens of processed supplements a day.

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"What is the point of growing up If you can't be childish sometimes..." - Tom Baker as Dr Who.

These plants are not so stupid to produce enzymes capable to digest their own fruits or tissues. Similarly animals are not so stupid to produce enzymes that digest their own tissues, organs, muscles etc.

First off, I know virtually nothing and am just a curious bystander with questions. Even if the enzymes in muscle meat could digest the meat, how does this imply that digestion would take place in the muscle. Don't you need several other biological components, like contents of the stomach, for digestion to take place? If you injected my buttocks with digestive enzymes and only the enzymes right now what would anything happen?

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Yet there are obviously people who are so stupid to believe such non-sense. Breathtaking and so amusing.

Once more Tyler which enzymes are there is the raw meat and fat we are talking of and that would help digest them ? Name them please.

Please do it

There are of course none. Absolutely none.

Again if there were any, meat would actually just digest by itself when left on butcher's shelf or in fridge within a few hours

Howard is certainly right about the remarkable fact he observed that raw food is far easier to digest than cooked food. But his interpretation is wrong. This has actually very little to do with raw food enzyme inactivation by heat. This "explanation" doesn't become true just because it has spread in alternative medicine circles.... It has essentially to do with the absence of heat generated damage and toxins. Damaged proteins for instance by racemization or glycation are much harder to digest than intact proteins because of the fairly high stereospecificity of our own digestive enzymes The key (enzyme) no longer fits well into the damaged lock (heated protein)

Your link supposed to provide support to the naive enzyme babble is also irrelevant. I didn't ask for a link advertising enzymes supplements for sale....

I like what you've said but you didn't mention anything about the role of the undamaged enzymes in raw meat. What role do they play in digestion? Could they be quickly transformed to ease digestion? If you could somehow remove all the enzymes in the muscle meat before digestion, would there be any effect?

I would guess they play some role for the betterment of digestion. Are you suggesting this role is nothing? Perhaps they don't directly digest the meat but did we evolve to not use these enzymes at all? Could they be useful elsewhere in the body?

Isn't all protein denatured in the stomach upon digestion? You are saying that cooking denatures protein in a way differently than than the way stomach acids denature protein. Because of the differences in denaturation the lock and key method of the enzymes naturally produced by the body is distorted enough that different enzymes must be produced by the body to break down the protein. Because of the difficulty to produce these enzymes for cooked proteins our bodies work harder and eventually succumb to disease faster. ? That sounds good to me.